rape – Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics
An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.Wed, 05 Apr 2017 14:50:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 The Amanda Lindhout Storyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/08/01/july-14-2014-amanda-lindhout/23737/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/08/01/july-14-2014-amanda-lindhout/23737/#disqus_threadFri, 01 Aug 2014 16:01:47 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=23737"Of course I was angry for everything that was happening to me, but as time went on in captivity, I just realized for my own self, for self-preservation, that I couldn’t stay trapped in that emotion, that I had to try to find ways to let it out, and that’s when I started developing practices like choosing forgiveness in captivity." More →

]]>In 2008, Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout was kidnapped by a group of Somali teenagers and held captive for over 460 days. She was tortured, starved, and abused repeatedly before finally being released for a ransom. Lindhout says she did more than just survive the ordeal, she was transformed by it. “Physically I was in chains on the floor, and I had no power, no control over that, but I still had the power to choose my response to what was happening to me, to hold on to my own morals and my own values,” Lindhout explains. “I knew somehow at the deepest part of my being that if I chose forgiveness, that experience just would not have the power to crush me.” Lindhout is the author of a memoir about her ordeal, A House in the Sky, written with Sara Corbett.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/08/01/july-14-2014-amanda-lindhout/23737/feed/3 HEAL Africahttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/02/03/february-3-2012-heal-africa/10211/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/02/03/february-3-2012-heal-africa/10211/#disqus_threadFri, 03 Feb 2012 17:33:09 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=10211“If we can bring in some light, the darkness will not overcome the light, and that’s where faith is. We believe that.” More →

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: There are few images of war’s destruction in the eastern Congolese city of Goma. Little was built in the first place. For two decades, regional militias have clashed over the minerals here. U.N. troops have brought some order but their reach—and mandate—are limited. So is the Congolese army’s effort to assert control.

A series of peace agreements and two democratic elections have brought some stability here, although very little development. There’s still virtually no paved road in this whole country. What has continued unabated is an epidemic of sexual violence. The United Nations says the Democratic Republic of Congo is the worst place on earth to be a woman.

One place where you get an idea of what that means is a refuge called HEAL Africa.

Women work to shake off unspeakable atrocities they have faced. The trauma has left most of them with injuries that render them incontinent. This woman wears a mask to conceal her maiming at the hands of militiamen who raided her home one night about a year ago.

ANNONCIATA: My older daughter escaped from them. they told me to go get her. And I said she’d escape from you, how could I ever catch her. Since I wouldn’t give them my daughter, they hit me on the head with a machete and after I fell down they used the same machete to cut off my lips.

DE SAM LAZARO: A volunteer health worker brought her to HEAL Africa. It is the only specialty care hospital in all of Eastern Congo. It was started 12 years ago by British-born Lyn Lusi and her Congolese husband, devout Christians who’d served the region for years before that as medical missionaries.

LYN LUSI(Co-Founder, HEAL Africa): Well, my husband was an orthopedic surgeon. He finished in Belgium in ’84, and to this day he’s still the only one, the only orthopedic surgeon in the east of the country.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Jo Lusi has performed thousands of surgical operations—fixing everything from club feet and cleft palates to fistulas, the vaginal, sometimes rectal tearing that comes from rape trauma or obstructed labor. HEAL Africa has trained nearly 30 young Congolese doctors, paying for their education elsewhere in Africa. Its bare bones emergency and intensive care are the only such services in a region of eight million people—supported by various private and international government grants. Seven hundred children with HIV get life-saving antiretroviral drugs here. But Dr. Lusi says all this is just one part of a much larger idea.

DR. JO LUSI (Co-Founder, HEAL Africa): When you serve human, I don’t see you here like a human. I see you like an image of God, so to do that you have to be holistic. You have to be total, you have to know what about the spirit, about the flesh, about the soul. Here the people are lacking everything. They don’t have food; absolute poverty. They are exploited. They are perishing because of lack of knowledge. They are perishing because of the lack of justice. So me and my wife said OK, how do we do a holistic system?

LYN LUSI: HEAL is an acronym, it stands for health, education, action in the community, and leadership development, and all of those are components of a healthy society.

DE SAM LAZARO: For many patients who come initially for medical care, healing is a years-long process of rebuilding a life. This shelter serves women whose fistulas have not healed—about a quarter of such cases.

BASENYA BANDORA: It is very different here from back in village. People were laughing at me: “She’s smelly, she was raped.” Here people know I am a complete person.

DE SAM LAZARO: Women are taught to sew, make baskets, and raise small animals, and they are allowed to dream.

BANDORA: I want to have a little shop, and I will make bread and I will sit there with my sewing machine and people will bring me things to sew. I will make baskets. If I can have a little house, that would be very nice.

DE SAM LAZARO: For now, for practical purposes, such dreams are pure fantasy, thanks to lingering health problems and also militiamen who continue to raid villages with impunity. Annonciata frequently sees the men who maimed her, but she reacted viscerally to a suggestion she might report them to the police.

ANNONCIATA: Uh uh uh uh! I’m terrified, they would kill me. Only God can punish them for what they did.

DE SAM LAZARO: But HEAL Africa has begun working to bring a more immediate justice to victims of rape. In partnership with the American Bar Association, local lawyers work to apprehend suspects and put them through the legal system here. It is flawed and corrupt but Lyn Lusi says only when Congolese begin to buy into it will it begin to work for them.

LYN LUSI: I would always encourage our legal aid to work ten times more on the issue of bringing the community in line with the law so that they appreciate what the law is trying to do and that they agree with it and that there’s social pressure, there’s a a desire within the community for zero tolerance of sexual violence, of any sort of violence.

DE SAM LAZARO: That’s what brought this 15-year-old girl and her father to the legal clinic to bring charges against a young man who raped her while she went to collect water for the family.

PATRICE KIHUJHO: I want him not only to be put in prison but I also want him to pay for the damages he caused. Last year, I turned 75 years old. When we were growing up, we never saw this kind of behavior. When you liked a girl, we would get married. I am really astonished. I’m not sure what’s going on, how they can take little girls and assault them.

DE SAM LAZARO: Lyn Lusi thinks it’s a consequence of fighting that has raged for two decades in Eastern Congo, destroying any sense of community.

LYN LUSI: You have seen your village destroyed, you’ve seen your people killed, you’re a young man with no future, I mean you have every reason to fight and every reason to go off and join the militia. There are also those militias that will kidnap children and take them into their armies and just to reinforce their ranks. Children are extremely good soldiers in that they have no fear, and they have no conscience.

DE SAM LAZARO: Where does one begin to repair this? The Lusis say they have worked to tap the enduring faith of most Congolese.

LYN LUSI: Here is a mandate to care that’s in the Muslim community, that’s in the Christian community, and it’s present in every single locality in Congo. You could say that probably 95 precent of Congolese will go to a place of worship once a month at least. So this is an amazing power within the community, and if we knew how to mobilize people correctly, around their mandate to care, then you can make a big impact on a social problem.

DE SAM LAZARO: HEAL Africa has gathered religious leaders and other community elders into so-called Nehemiah Committees. These gatherings address sources of violence early on, mediating local business disputes or competing land claims before they escalate. Lyn Lusi says it’s a start.

LYN LUSI: I have no illusions that we’re dealing with major issues that are pulling Congo apart. I don’t think HEAL Africa is going to empty the ocean, but we can take out a bucketful here and a bucketful there. There is so much evil and so much cruelty, so much selfishness and it is like darkness. But if we can bring in some light, the darkness will not overcome the light, and that’s where faith is. We believe that.

DE SAM LAZARO: For her work, Lusi was awarded the 2011 Opus Prize, a one million dollar award given by the Minnesota-based Opus Foundation to a faith-driven social entrepreneur.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/02/03/february-3-2012-heal-africa/10211/feed/7 Retribution for Child Molestershttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2008/06/13/june-13-2008-retribution-for-child-molesters/53/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2008/06/13/june-13-2008-retribution-for-child-molesters/53/#disqus_threadFri, 13 Jun 2008 15:14:50 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2008/08/29/cover-retribution-for-child-molesters/53Right now, 36 states permit capital punishment for murder. Should that penalty be extended to those who rape children? More →

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Supreme Court ruled this week that all 270 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo have the right under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in federal court. Another High Court decision excepted soon could expand the death penalty. Right now, 36 states permit capital punishment for murder. Should that penalty be extended to those who rape children? Criminologists say people are punished to prevent them from committing another crime, as a deterrent to others, to rehabilitate them and as retribution — revenge. Does revenge for child rape justify execution? Tim O’Brien begins his report from New Orleans, and his story contains some material that may be disturbing.

VOICE OF FEMALE ANCHOR (ABC 26 News 1998 file footage): Today, safety shattered in a quiet neighborhood. A child raped. The teens who did it: on the run.

VOICE OF MALE REPORTER (ABC 26 News 1998 file footage): People who live in the Woodmere subdivision are hoping for peace of mind. The thought — a rapist is on the loose…

TIM O’BRIEN: The brutal rape of a small child galvanized this normally tranquil community just outside New Orleans and horrified the neighbors.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: There’s got to be some maniac running around out here.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I wouldn’t have never thought that someone would live on my street and do something like this.

Sheriff HARRY LEE (Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, during 1998 press conference): I’m in my 18th year as sheriff and I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen, and this is probably the worst.

O’BRIEN: So bad that Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee put up $5,000 of his own money for information leading to an arrest. In addition to the psychological trauma, the eight-year old girl also suffered severe physical injuries. The city of New Orleans rallied to help, including the New Orleans Saints football team, which launched a fundraising drive to help defray the child’s mounting medical expenses.

O’BRIEN: The manhunt became so intense sheriff’s deputies began stopping all young black males in the neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: They made me take my shirt off, and, you know, it’s cold out here, you know?

VOICE OF FEMALE REPORTER: What were they looking for?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Just tattoos, any little marks.

O’BRIEN: The victim had told police her attackers were two black teenagers. But the story fell apart, and suspicion began to shift to the child’s stepfather, Patrick Kennedy, who had called co-workers on the morning of the rape seeking advice on how to remove blood from a white carpet. It turned out Kennedy also had been accused, although never convicted, of sexually molesting four foster children in his care. They were removed. His eight-year-old stepdaughter eventually said that it was Kennedy — six-feet-four, 375 pounds — who had raped her and then told her to blame it on the teenagers.

CHILD VICTIM : First, he told me that he was going to make up a story and I better say it.

O’BRIEN: And, she said, it wasn’t the first time Kennedy had sexually molested her.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Did Patrick Kennedy do something to you just that one day, or did he did he do anything any other times?

CHILD VICTIM : He did more than once. I think five (holds up five fingers).

PROSECUTOR : More than once? You think five?

CHILD VICTIM : Um-hmmm.

PROSECUTOR : Okay. Do you remember how old you were the very first time he did something?

CHILD VICTIM : (shakes her head “no”)

O’BRIEN: Three years earlier the Louisiana legislature overwhelmingly passed a law authorizing the death penalty for anyone who rapes a child under the age of 12. The jury agreed unanimously: Patrick Kennedy deserved nothing less. The law was introduced by then state representative Pete Schneider

(to Rep. Pete Schneider): Is this the kind of guy you had in mind when you passed this law?

Representative PETE SCHNEIDER (Former Louisiana State Representative): Absolutely. Someone who would brutally rape a child — and rape is wrong no matter whom it is done to, but in a situation like this I believe the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for the crime.

O’BRIEN: Kennedy’s court appointed lawyers disagree and have taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing if the death penalty for rape isn’t cruel, it certainly is unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

BILLY SOTHERN (Capital Appeals Project): Mr. Kennedy is one of only two men on death row in the state of Louisiana for the crime of child rape. Indeed, Mr. Kennedy and this other individual are the only two men in the United States for the crime of child rape who’ve been sentenced to death.

O’BRIEN: The U.S. Supreme Court, more than 30-years ago, found the death penalty unconstitutional for rape — that death is disproportionate to the crime.

BARBARA WALTERS (Anchor, ABC Evening News, from 1977 file footage): Good evening. Our top stories: The Supreme Court says the crime of rape should not be punishable by death.

O’BRIEN: But that case involved a 16-year-old married woman. Louisiana contends the rape of a child is much worse and that the Court’s earlier opinion shouldn’t apply when the victim is so young.

Rep. SCHNEIDER: Twenty-nine percent of the rape cases in this country — and it’s probably underreported — are committed on 11-year-olds and younger. Twenty-nine percent! And they’re horrendous crimes. You steal their childhood. You steal their soul. You hurt the world when you do something like that to a child.

O’BRIEN: We may never know to what extent, if any, the death penalty actually deters, but there’s clearly another theory behind this Louisiana law. Call it revenge, or retribution, or a thirst for simple justice which, if left unfulfilled, may encourage others, loved ones, to go out and find it on their own. Sex offenders may be the least likely to be deterred, and their crimes are the most likely to bring retribution. Jeffrey Doucet: suspected of kidnapping and molesting an 11-year-old Baton Rouge boy. When sheriff’s deputies brought Doucet back to Louisiana, the boy’s father, Gary Plauche, was waiting at the Baton Rouge airport with a gun. Believing they could never get a conviction, prosecutors allowed Plauche to plead guilty to manslaughter with a suspended sentence. The state’s attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, says it’s the state that must exact the retribution, not loved ones, and that the Louisiana law makes it less likely they”ll try.

(to Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell): Even if it doesn’t deter others — that’s an open debate. Bu even if it doesn’t, you say the death penalty in cases like this is justified?

O’BRIEN: Some of your opposition, including the Catholic Church, will quote the Bible and say “vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord.”

Mr. CALDWELL : Well, we see a lot of people that don’t have a clue. But I think most people understand, even liberals have children that if they’re raped and mutilated, like in a lot of these cases, they would be for the death penalty, whether they say so or not. It’s always the other guy.

O’BRIEN: It’s a retributive function of the law?

Mr. CALDWELL : I think so.

O’BRIEN: Ironically, a number of child advocacy groups are siding with the defendant in this case, telling the Supreme Court the death penalty for child molesters is counterproductive. Judy Benitez, who heads the Louisiana Foundation against Sexual Assault, says Louisiana’s law may discourage children from coming forward and give the molester an incentive to kill his victim.

JUDY BENITEZ: If they’re not facing any harsher punishment for killing the child and raping them, then they are for — and I say this sort of facetiously — for just raping them, you know, the state can’t kill them but once. So what are they going to do? And this way they don’t leave a living witness.

O’BRIEN: Patrick Kennedy’s lawyer says if retribution is the goal, life in prison is retribution enough.

Mr. SOTHERN: The alternative punishment here in Louisiana for the crime of child rape is life without the possibility of parole at Angola penitentiary. It’s “you die at Angola.” So it’s not like the alternative punishment for this is somehow lenient. The alternative punishment in this instance is extraordinarily harsh.

O’BRIEN: Both sides agree the law does make it easier for prosecutors to negotiate a plea agreement with the defendant for life in prison, sparing the child the trauma of having to testify at a trial. The question for the Supreme Court, however, is not whether this is a wise law or even a good law, or whether it even makes any sense at all, only whether it’s such a bad law as to violate the standards of decency of a civilized nation as embodied in the U.S. Bill of Rights.